The scale of Chinese production since 2010 has driven the price of these technologies down by 60 to 90 percent, the researchers found. And last year, more than 90 percent of wind and solar projects commissioned worldwide produced power more cheaply than the cheapest available fossil-fuel alternative, they said. That cost advantage might have seemed laughable before China began pumping billions of dollars of subsidies into the sector.
This is NOT because of China, All the technologies for the multi MegaWatt wind turbines were developed in Europe, and the race to make them cheaper per Watt also clearly is more due to European innovation than Chinese cheap production. There has been heavy competition among western producers pressing the price ever lower per kW. This has been done by making larger more efficient turbines, where Europe has been clearly in the lead for decades.
On that front China merely joined the race, and the European Vestas remain the world largest manufacturer of wind turbines in the world, and AFAIK Siemens is the worlds largest manufacturer of offshore wind turbines.
China is of course a formidable competitor, but they have in no way surpassed us on wind turbines yet.
On Solar China is making massive amounts of good cheap panels, but both Germany and South Korea make better panels, that aren’t that much more expensive.
Nope, that’s just not true, China is a major participant/player now, but the engine that drives green energy was started in Europe way before China became a major factor.
I know from personal experience, because we’ve been working on that shit since the 70’s, and made very good progress on it way before China became a factor.
To say China is driving this because they are big today, is like saying Toyota is behind the success of cars around the world. Both are nonsense, Toyota make good cars but that does not make them the “engine” of car production.
China also make good products for green energy, but that doesn’t make them the engine. This development would very obviously have happened without China, because it was already in full swing before China was a factor.
you talk about the innovations a lot, but that’s not everything there is to it.
China massively subsidized its solar panel production for 20 years, at a loss. The reason they did that is because they ideologically believed that it would eventually pay off. Without these massive investments, solar might not have grown so much and might still be more expensive than fossil fuels due to a lack of economies of scale.
If you take china out of the game, you end up with solar panels that are not the cheapest source of energy, and that massively changes the outcome. It is only because solar panels are so cheap today that we see so many of them being installed. China was simply brave enough to invest billions and billions of dollars into them, instead of leaving it to the free market. That is what china did well.
Interesting: looking at the https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/china-energy-transition-review-2025/how-chinas-transition-is-reshaping-the-global-ener/ section of the report, they keep combining “solar and wind” as one category, and evidence suggests that China is a ways ahead in research measured by patents deemed competitive in solar while a similar amount behind in wind, though they are far ahead in both when measured by research citation counts. The sheer size of China might also be at play here.
Yes the claim of the article is obviously false regarding wind turbines, I’m not denying they make their own developments, maybe some are necessary to avoid older patents IDK. But there is no way they are the driver of this development, just like Japan or Toyota was never the driver of development of better cars. Even if arguably they made the best and the most cars.
On batteries Tesla was actually first with their MEGA factory, and although China is now the biggest producer of solar panels and batteries, they were never the driver behind this development.
The drivers were technologies first developed in the west, and China just became the main production hub of batteries and panels. if it hadn’t been China, it would still have been developed and produced at a growing pace for an ever growing market anyway.
By your argument would you say that Japan and Korea are the engines of the lithium ion batteries?
No, lithium batteries were developed over several decades before they reached a level where they became stable and affordable enough for mass consumption.
There is not a single point that is the driver of such trends, but I’d say that the research resulting in batteries becoming good enough for ever more use cases, is a major part of what drives adoption.
And on that point I’d agree that China is ahead. With BYD and CATL leading the development of better car batteries.
But they are not engines drivings nations away from fossil fuels. Because for instance Europe has been working on that shit since the 70’s.
Sure China is a part of it now, I’ll even admit they are a significant part, but they were not at any point in time the driver for it, and Japan and Korea weren’t either.
It would be more fair to say Denmark was a driver for the adoption of wind turbines, because Denmark was the country that invested money in developing the technology basically from scratch, to enable the big MegaWatt turbines we have today. Something that was developed in Denmark when most didn’t care to, and the few that did failed to make commercially viable turbines. And the Danish company Vestas now also has the world biggest wind turbine production.
But although Denmark were a driver, they aren’t anymore, because wind turbines can now and are developed and built all over the world.
The same with batteries, batteries are developed and built all over the world, with Samsung, Panasonic, LG also being reputable producers of batteries, China is just the biggest production hub, and on some types of batteries they are ahead. But China is not the engine driving this industry, it could be said to be mostly increased demand for electric cars, and electric cars is not a country.
I’m concurring on wind and smart grids but dissenting on solar and batteries.
I’m not saying China isn’t a major factor, and in the lead in some ways, especially on batteries.
I’m just saying that being in the lead doesn’t necessarily make you thee driving factor.
Which I thought I gave a good example on with Toyota. Where it’s easy to see how ridiculous the statement is.
The article didn’t say China is driving its development (like you say Europe would have researched regardless); it says China is driving its adoption including in foreign nations. The article does leave out European research’s contribution to the cheap production of wind turbines, but the article’s claim is that China’s production and foreign policy is driving new adoption.
That’s exactly what I responded to. And as I’ve already written, China being the #1 manufacturer on volume doesn’t drive adoption any more than Toyota making the most cars are driving adoption of cars.
Adoption is very much driven by the technologies that have made the technology feasible to begin with. And that was for decades mostly driven by Europe.
It’s a nonsense way to understand the adoption of green energy sources which have many other factors than slightly cheaper production in China driving adoption.
As I mentioned, there are other countries making panels that are competitive, obviously if China stopped making panels, those makers would scale up their production to replace it.
For instance Hyundai are very competitive, and offer 25 year warranty against typically 10 years for Chinese panels. They have very low degradation and cost less than 10% more than a typical Chinese panel.
There are perfectly good options without China.
What’s driving adoption is the fact that the technologies have matured and become affordable, which would have happened anyway.
There is no doubt that adoption is NOT driven by China, and very very obviously not by China alone. Anymore than adoption of oil was driven by Saudi Arabia.
Toyota isn’t driving adoption of cars because 1. cars have already saturated the market, so there’s no need for ambassadorship and commercials assume people need cars 2. Toyota has 14% market share, not 70%. Same for Saudi crude. None of these are true for wind or solar or batteries.
You don’t show that this would have happened anyway. The article’s point is that China’s production played a large role in making it affordable and their research a somewhat smaller one.